_13 October ‘09 Well this is the first of many nights that are going to be soooo different from the last couple of years. It’s now 7:15pm, we kind of had dinner (I found a left-over pork chop in the refrigerator and a bread stick), and we’re sitting here at the dining table reading. I promised the family I’d keep the site up so I put my magazine down and plugged the computer in and got right to it. This morning we were still at Ricardo and Susie’s place. After getting back with the coach and checking the air pressure in the tires, I found that I couldn’t get a gauge onto the outside duals…what a pain. Now it’s back to the tire shop this morning to get this fixed…can’t a person get a job done right the first time??? OK, stems all fixed, wind blowing like hell, and it’s COLD, let’s get on the road. We’re going to miss the hospitality of Ricardo and Susie a lot, but we’ve got to get going, snow you know… We headed south on I-5 until we got to Wilsonville and we stopped at Camping World to see if we could dump our black and gray tanks. It seems that we’ve got to move on to a state campground some 12 miles further south and west to find a dump station. We had no other choices as we were FULL !!! As we pulled into Champoeg State Heritage Park we were very impressed. It sits on the shores of the Willamette River in a beautiful wooded site on rolling farm hills, has a wonderful hospitality center offering lots of goodies and help, and sits about 9 miles from Newberg, Oregon. Leaving the park we decided to head west instead of back to I-5 and made our way to the coast. Just a little further west, and just as your coming into McMinnville, we came across a real surprise…The Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum. This is one of the best of Aviation museums we have yet visited, and was the brain child of a young local pilot, Captain Michael King Smith. As a young pilot in the Oregon Air National Guard in the early 1990’s and flying an F-15 he started to see his dream come true. Then unfortunately he was called to a different calling, but his mortal dream continues. This is also the home of the famous “Spruce Goose”

_that was built and flown by Howard Hughs!!! Let me tell you, this is a big ship… Another dream that came true and still gives people amazement. If you’re ever in the area of Portland of the surrounding areas, you’ve got to make this a stop. Just after 4pm we pulled into Lincoln City and found a state campground alongside Devils Lake.

_We’ve been to Lincoln City many times and also to Devils Lake a few times, but never to the state park. It’s a nice campground right on the shores of the lake (although you have to hike to see the lake) with some large campsites to park at. We’re only going to be here for one night but as it was getting a little late in the afternoon we decided to stay here for our “official” first campground with our new “Minnie”. For $19 we’ve got full hook-ups in a nice campground…what else would we want??? When we awoke this morning we woke to rain hitting the roof and the wind kicking up, well just after pulling into here we were welcomed with some more rain. This is the first rain that we’ve had for quite some time so I’m not complaining, just letting you know.